


Race Day

by gardnerhill



Series: Welcome to Bakerstown [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Horse Racing, Story: Silver Blaze, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 10:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4388786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what I write when I listen to Aaron Copeland’s “Rodeo,” apparently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Race Day

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2015 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #20, _**Yankee Doodle Came to London**_ _: Doyle seemed to have a fascination for people and things American (three of his four novel-length Sherlock Holmes tales feature someone from North America), and societies as diverse as Pennsylvanian coal-town gangs, the Latter-Day Saints and the KKK appear in Canon. Remember that Watson was whumped by a Chicago gangster in 3GAR. Put something or someone American in your entry (or just have Joan Watson show up), or do an American-based pastiche (or just put Joan Watson in the story, did I mention her?)._

Fourth of July is a curse on every lawman’s lips in every cowtown out here. You take a whole pile of drunk-ass farmers and ranchers and cow-men and con-men and thieves and rustlers and renegades and Kiowa and Comanche – and their women, _and_ the whores, all armed and dangerous, and you throw in a _celebration_ during the hottest time of the year – well let’s just say things get mighty splendid.

Bakerstown was no different. Until those two splashed in one day in mid-January, up to their horses’ ankles in rain, and things started changing.

First big change was the one Sheriff Lock put in place right off – no guns permitted within the town borders. There was a big howl about that one, but Lock told everyone that if they wanted to kill someone they’d just have to use a knife or their fists until they were at the outskirts. And they could snarl all they wanted at the rule, but they couldn’t call the sheriff a hypocrite because Lock never carried a gun himself. A lot of us scoffed at the idea – and I’ve been mayor here for 4 years, I should know – but damned if it didn’t start working. Farmers started leaving their deer rifles at the sheriff’s office, and cattlemen and hired hands their pistols. Within three months a shooting in town was a rarity, and a lot easier to track down the culprit for prison or the noose.

“It’s the women,” Lock explained to me. “We’ve seen it everywhere we go. A town that’s safer for the wives to do business does better. The women talk to each other, and they go home and talk to their husbands. There isn’t a married man alive who wouldn’t rather be laughed at by other men for not carrying a gun than deal with an angry wife at home for carrying it.”

“Suits me. Knife wounds are a hell of a lot easier to sew up,” Doc drawled. He carried his Colt and no one gainsaid him on that, Lock included. No one accused Doc of hypocrisy because everyone knew the story about the loco sumbitch picking up a sidewinder in his bare hand to throw it at someone who’d threatened the sheriff – he was just as dangerous without being a crack shot.

The other thing Lock did was suggest that I announce a new event for the Fourth – a horse race from the outskirts to Riker’s Butte and back, with a $20 gold piece for the winner. This was a considerably more entertaining prospect for most folks than just getting drunk and shooting things (which they could do any other day of the year). Every man who had a nag started putting the animal through its paces; Jacobs the blacksmith and his two boys worked dawn to dusk turning out new horseshoes to meet the demand.

This didn’t stop the normal temperament of Bakerstown from coming out, however. Along with the new horseshoes and the stepped-up racing here and there to prepare for the big day, there were fellows trying to cripple the competition. Horse thefts and lamings skyrocketed; Col. Ross was found with his head stove in at his ranch and his fastest mare, Silver Blaze, missing (Lock tracked the beast and only shook his head at Joshua Straker’s feeble attempt to hide her facial marks with lampblack; Straker had nothing further to say on the matter, as he’d tried to pull a gun on Lock in Doc's presence).

“Unhealthy excitement about the race,” I said after we’d returned the mare to the colonel’s widow and fire-eyed son and sent Straker to join Ross at the undertaker’s.

Lock pursed his lips, which tilted his pipe upward a bit. “As opposed to the unhealthy excitement engendered by normal Independence Day activity around here, Mayor Strade?”

“Don’t believe him, Les. Admit it, Sheriff.” Doc pointed a finger as if taking aim at his friend. “You just want to show everyone how well you sit a horse.”

“I have no idea what Doc is going on about, Mr. Mayor,” Lock said.

The actual morning of the Fourth began in the usual manner, with whoops and gunfire – but outside the town limits this time. It was a lot shorter duration, too, since they’d have to surrender the guns to get good and drunk at one of the saloons, and sober men don’t spend as much time wasting their bullets.

Other activities filled the day: wrestling matches and fist-fights, footraces, horseshoe tossing, target shooting, and a poetry competition (two or three good mocks of “Rose My Rose” this year) – all accompanied by enough food and beer to satisfy the town. As mayor of the town I was obligated to make a flowery speech about progress and our country’s glorious history, but instead I read the Declaration of Independence aloud.

At two the racers lined up at the edge of town, with people lining the start of the two-mile distance to the foot of the butte. There was Silver Blaze, with Ross’ angry young son astride her; Bob Norbertson on his piebald Shoshone Prince; black hired hands and blond farmers and brown rancheros and even a few of the local Comanche on their ponies. (That had been another sore spot for the more civilized townsmen, but Lock said he reckoned if they did business in town as did the farmers and ranchers they got to race.)

From my seat on a wooden platform built for the occasion I watched as Lock paced before the racers on his bay – and Doc was right, there was something grand in the way he sat. He looked like he should be out hunting a fox on a green estate instead of roaming the brush for chicken-thieving coyotes. Must have learned that dainty way of riding back east, somewhere.

“Riker’s Butte,” the sheriff called. “There’s a wooden fence-post set up there at the base. Circle round the post and head back here. Doc’s at the post with a few others to make sure you go all the way there before turning around. When you come back, race past the mayor’s stand,” and he pointed with a stiff short whip where I sat, “and the first to do so is the winner. Now take your mark, and upon my signal –”

Steve Dixie fired his Colt into the air. All the horses took off, with people shouting and waving hats and shooting a few more rounds in the air for good measure.

The look Lock gave the disappearing riders would have made a marble statue bust out laughing, but I manfully held it down to a sympathetic, “Pearls before swine, Sheriff.”

“I can think of a few other old sayings, Mr. Mayor,” Lock said peevishly, peering at the shouting spectators. “ ‘Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,’ and ‘there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip’.”

Before I could ask what Sheriff Lock meant by that, he rode away from my stand toward where a group of _vaqueros_ stood or sat on their own horses with their families. Lock exchanged a few words in Spanish with one of the mounted men, who handed over his coiled _lariata_. Lock shook out a length of the rope and doubled it, swiftly forming a slip- noose, and moved back into the throng.

Shouting growing louder. The racers were coming back.

Lock flung his lasso and yanked. A rifle flew through the air, caught by the noose, as if Lock had just hooked a salmon out of the river. Lock seized the rifle with his free hand. The horseman who’d been holding it broke and galloped off, with Lock in pursuit.

I was so caught up in what Lock was doing that I almost missed noting the winner of the race (Wasapay, one of the Comanche, whose spotted pony tore straight through Bakerstown without stopping at my stand, head and neck ahead of Silver Blaze).

The booing townsmen might have torn down my stand in protest at an Indian winning if Doc hadn’t come cantering after the last of the stragglers, looking like a few dead bodies would make his day perfect – and right on his heels Sheriff Lock loped back, towing a bound man on a horse behind him by the riata in his hand. “Seems some objected to an open race more than others, Doc.”

Doc tipped his hat mockingly to the captive. “Afternoon, Miz Ross.”

I gaped and stared again; so did the crowd, distracted from their angry-mob desire for destruction. That wasn’t a man at all, as Doc had seen – it was the Widow Ross dressed as a man.

The novelty of the intrigue was distracting enough that the crowd forgot about trying to change the outcome of the race, and I was able to hand the prize over without fanfare to the winning rider, who never got off his pony and who tore out of town the second the coin was in his hand (along with the other Comanche and Kiowa who’d been in town for the festivities, who clearly knew the ways of white men).

All would come out eventually, all the sordid pettiness of a love affair with Straker and a plan to hide the mare to drive up betting, and that Marian Ross had wanted to disqualify any front-runner who threatened the ascendency of her Silver Blaze, permanently – either by killing the horse or the rider, or both if she was fast enough with the Winchester repeater Lock had yanked from her grasp. (I had to admit, the use of Silver Blaze’s old horseshoe nailed to the fence-post with which Straker clubbed Colonel Ross was a nice touch, trying to make it look like a panicked kick from the escaping mare.)

But for now the excitement was over. Ross was locked in the jail; her kicking, biting son offered a choice of joining his mother in lockup or being taken in tow by the schoolteacher (to the boy’s credit, he chose family); and I joined the two men in a celebratory glass while firecrackers went off by the thousands out in the street, provided by the Chinese families.

“Perhaps next year the riders will wait until I give the signal,” Lock said, lighting up his pipe.

“Sure to, Lock.” Doc tipped his hat down to hide his grin. “Sure to.”

I thought of the mayhem and murder that had led up to today. I nodded. “Good idea of yours, Sheriff. This is the most peaceful Fourth Bakerstown’s ever had.”


End file.
